 Tēnā koutou, katoa. Ko tamaki panga hira te whare ko gai toku ingawa. Ki ora aum gai digital experience lead at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Basically, I'm here today to talk about how we 3D printed a bunch of shags and chucked them on an island, all in the name of research. We have an environmental problem in the whole reiki golf that puts a spotted shag and many other species at risk, and our museum has a real stake in trying to solve this problem. So we had an idea that uses some pretty new tech and to cxr collection, conservation and research. Before I start, I know you're thinking, man, this is going to have a lot of shag puns, especially as I am talking about shag's breeding or the colloquial term known as shagging. I'll restrain from term shagarific shagadalic and won't shag around on these puns any further. This story starts with the spotted shag or falacrocorax punctatus and ornithologist Matt Rainer, who is the curator of land vertebrates at Auckland Museum, who studies birds, particularly sea birds, and how environmental change is affecting them. He has been working for some time on the hierarchy golf species, monitoring these connellies and tracking a sad decline. Our use of the golf has not been kind to these birds. You see they are piscavores. They eat fish and well we have taken most of the fish. He found this out by looking at unique little bioindicators in the feathers of museum specimens called stable isotopes. These isotopes tell us the proportion of fish in the diet of the birds have declined over time, matching their population declines. He also looked at population genetics in these birds using DNA extracted from our museum specimens and were shocked to find the hierarchy golf species spotted shag are genetically distinct from birds further south, making it even more important to save the 900 or so we have left. Currently spotted shags have only one major breeding colony in the hierarchy golf, so we decided we needed insurance policy and the form of colony elsewhere. The idea of creating fake colonies isn't new. A few years ago, 80 concrete gannets were placed on Mana Island with a soundscape, which attracted one famous gannet named Nigel, otherwise known as Nigel Nomates. Nigel quickly became infatuated with one of the decoys designed to lure the real thing to the island. He built a nest around the decoy and fell in love. Sadly, this story takes a Shakespearean turn. Nigel died in the nest he created with his beloved concrete gannet. So we decided we'd create our own fake spotted shag colony. Using our collection of taxidermies spotted shag, the irony being that these specimens were actually shot by Auckland Museum staff in the early 1900s, which was an acceptable practice. We 3D scanned these birds using create form scanners, the Go 50s. We weren't too sure of the output at this early stage, but we knew if we had a good enough 3D file we could potentially 3D print or make molds of these birds for the colony. The scanners were an incredible piece of technology and we've been using them for the past three years to digitise our vast collection to sketch that. Now, 3D printing has been around for a while. It's still kind of new technology though, right? We have 3D printers in our basement in the museum, but we quickly found a few issues with the printing process. So we couldn't print in full colour. We couldn't print to scale. The 3D printing material wasn't strong enough. These molds would have to withstand harsh weather conditions, seawater, et cetera. Finally, the 3D printer could catch on fire, which really wasn't ideal. As part of the investigation, we did also look at creating molds, but quickly found that they were actually a lot more expensive and that the 3D printing process seemed to be relatively quicker and also more cost-effective. We found an external provider called 3D clone print and they did an incredible job of printing all eight spotted shags. They used an ABS type of plastic that can withstand more than 90 degrees and added an exterior resin to make them more durable. These shags were printed in parts and then they got assembled together afterwards. Once printed and all that together, they come out looking a little bit like this. You might have noticed there's a couple of holes in the bottom. This is so we can fix them to steel rods on the island, ensuring that they don't end up in the ocean and it could be a PR disaster for Auckland Museum. We could only print in one colour and we needed another solution for that. So we recruited some wonderful volunteers who came in and helped get these birds ready to hit the town. We used marine-based paints and the volunteers working closely with the curators chose the right colours and that was the last step in getting them ready for their journey further in the whole Reiki Gulf in search of love. The birds headed northeast to be installed on the noises, which are a collection of privately-owned islands near Rikino Island in Auckland's whole Reiki Gulf. The islands are uninhabited, pest-free and offer some excellent fishing and diving. Installing the birds requires finding a suitable location, rocky outcrop close to flyways, feeding grounds in a bonus pest-free environment so rats and stoats and other nasties don't rob your nest. These birds were incredibly lifelike replicas complete with blue eyeshadow. There are many spots and various positions. This just isn't any old poo. As you can see, it's carefully applied poo. I call this Matt Jackson Pollock moment. He even got down on his hands in these precarious precipices to make sure it was a bonafide replica of spotted shag poop. Finally, we installed a soundscape of shag's calling which is a method widely used before to really add to the environment and hopefully further incentivise these shag's to fly down and take a look. The installation was placed in early fifth this year. We do have a camera set up to monitor them during breeding season to check the activity. Look, this is an experiment, adds by no means a silver bullet and trying to help or try to solve the seaboo population in the whole Reiki Gulf. But we pulled on our resources, internal capabilities and took some burgeoning tech to aid us in hope that this type of experience can be re-executed in other ways and more importantly, create awareness. It's an example of how a cultural institute can access knowledge across teams. It is part of Auckland Museum five-year strategy for pushing stretch thinking and leading a museum digital revolution. Finally, just acknowledging that we could not have done this project without the partners involved, special mention to CLNL Gregory Trust who supported the 3D printing cost, Tim Lovegrove, Todd Landers, Nils Pockel, Yurita family who own and conserve the noises islands. Tia ora, thank you.